


Let the Games Begin

by RiverTam



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Blood and Injury, Brief mention of restraints, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gladiators, Jack and Tony grew up together, Jack has his own Iron Man suit because Reasons, Nuke - Freeform, Sakaar (Marvel), Unintentional cryostasis, suicide mission, the ultimate sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:34:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverTam/pseuds/RiverTam
Summary: Jack Rollins has not had a good time of it, lately. He'd like to be able to hit a reset button to a week ago, before Project Pegasus was blown up by an alien maniac, before they lost the Tesseract, and before said alien maniac made mincemeat of Stuttgart. Before Brock decided they didn't need to be a 'they' anymore.And then the Chitauri arrive.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a drabble, un-betad, pulled from a prose RP fic I'm working on with another writer. Enjoy!
> 
> I might write more in this story if people are interested.

Jack’s lungs burn as he hauls himself up the cable of the elevator, hand over hand. The steel bites through his gloves and into his hands, stinging with every grasp. The radio chatter in his ear is a dull buzz, words fading into each other despite the panicked voices of the STRIKE team.

_ Jack…  _ Fury’s voice had been rough and low when he tapped into Jack’s comm less than a minute ago.  _ We need a miracle. _

Kicking off the elevator wall, Jack launches himself into the ruined penthouse of the Tower. Glass shards litter the once-pristine imported tile, and they crunch underfoot as Jack staggers toward the far wall.

“JARVIS,” Jack grits out as his boot slides fractionally on some debris. “Tell me Blackbird’s still operational!”

The AI’s answer barely registers, but the emergency hatch in the wall splitting open is enough. A sleek suit of black and gold armor spirals out and fractures open just in time for Jack to slam face-first into it. Mechanisms whir and whine around him as he dives for the balcony before the suit’s done encasing his body.

Rumlow’s harsh bark in Jack’s ear is only another distraction as he swan dives off the platform, kicks on the repulsors, and streaks off toward the ocean.

_ You don’t get to give me orders anymore Brock,  _ Jack thinks, and bares his teeth as he focuses in on the airborne missile.  _ Not today. Not ever again. _

Tony’s already a third of the way toward the missile, but Jack knows even without looking at the readout that Tony won’t make it in time.

Blackbird roars past Iron Man, the earsplitting crackle of overdriven jets negating the suit’s stealth design.

_ “What the fuck was- Jack? What are you-”  _ Tony’s voice is lost as Jack kicks the boots up another notch, ignoring the warning blinking in the lower left of the visor.

The suit shakes and strains around Jack, and he can feel the heat from the boot jets creeping through the insulation. “Go back, Ants.” The nickname is old, and one Jack hasn’t used for his almost-brother in over a decade, but if anything can get the guy to listen, it’s that. Jack grits his teeth, braces himself for the sickening reversal in G-force, and wrenches himself around to wrestle with the nuke. Once he’s got a hold on it, he sets his eyeline on the gaping hole in the universe, and  _ pushes. _

  
  


Brock Rumlow stares numbly at the speck of light slowly rising upward over the bay. He feels… sick. Not that making the ultimate sacrifice isn’t something every STRIKE agent willingly agrees to every day they get out of bed, but…

It’s  _ Jack. _

It’s Jack, and Brock can’t-

“ROLLINS!” Brock roars as a detachment of alien aircraft break off in a useless attempt to chase Jack down. There’s nothing he can do, not this far away, and he’s never felt more helpless.

Well, no.

He feels exactly as helpless as he did when he saw the glassy-eyed shock on Jack’s face last night in his office on base.

The nuke - and Jack with it - careen toward the city with no signs of stopping.

  
  


Mickey Rollins sits in the middle of the cafeteria at medical school, one hand over his mouth, the other gripped white-knuckled around the arm of his wheelchair. No one on the TV knows who the black and gold Iron Man is.

Mickey does.

  
  


The sharp double-crack of a sonic boom makes even the STRIKE agents reflexively flinch, and Romanoff curses sharply over the radio. Brock can’t tear his eyes off of the figure straining to redirect the missile, and he grimaces when Jack bounces off the peak of Stark Tower.

Time seems to stand still as fate races skyward, then-

Nothing.

One heartbeat, two, three, then there’s a dull  _ whump _ and the aliens crumple around them like puppets with their strings cut.

Despite the chaos around him, Brock can’t look away from the hole in the sky.

“Jack… please…”

He just… Please, let whatever gods are left give him a chance to make things right.

Please.

  
  


Jack fixes his eyes on the gargantuan command ship, lets his fingers slip off the body of the nuke, and takes one last deep breath.

Blackbird lights up blinding gold as Jack charges the repulsors, lifts his hands, and blasts the nuke forward with all his strength.

  
  


Rogers’ voice is ragged when he gives the order.  _ “Close it.” _

Begging silently, Brock searches the sky desperately for any sign - anything.

Romanoff grunts as she forces the alien scepter into the device. Thunder rumbles through the earth itself, reality ripples, and the fracture between worlds implodes.

  
  


While Tony and Jack may have played with flight records like teenagers with an Xbox, Jack knows that Blackbird isn’t equipped for proper space travel. The searing cold works its fingers in through every crack and crevice in the armor, offset only by the heat of the explosion in front of him.

Jack knows without looking that the doorway he flew through isn’t there anymore.

He’s alone.

The command ship, ripped into three pieces by the force of the blast, lists slightly as it floats suspended in nothingness.

As Jack closes his eyes, he says a silent prayer to anything that might be listening that it was worth it. That they won the battle, and they’ll win the war. That everyone else can go home safe tonight.

The cold creeps in, Jack’s joints stiffen, and he exhales.

  
  


Mickey is given a small blue medal in a small brown box, a hollow smile from the President, and a few banker’s boxes of Jack’s personal effects. Brock, a fixture of their lives in so many ways for so many years, looks just as lost as Mickey feels.

It doesn’t take much thought before Mickey throws himself into medical school with a fervor that some might call unhealthy. Brock throws himself into a bottle. Tony throws himself into his lab, and no one hears from him for days.

Rogers - call me Steve - pays Mickey a visit a week later. He offers Mickey a lighter, an old Zippo that Grandpa Monty used during the war, a borrowed trinket that Steve never had the chance to return. Once Steve’s left for the night, Mickey finds himself putting on Jack’s dog tags -  _ I’ll come back for these. Keep them safe for me. _

It’s a long few years, and the wedding is bittersweet with only cousins and friends on Mickey’s side of the church. Another few years give them little Jacqueline, and Mickey can already tell she’s going to grow up just like her uncle, the world’s hero.

When she starts going by Jackie, it breaks Mickey’s heart a little, and heals it back up a little, too. And when she signs on the line at the SHIELD recruiter’s office, Mickey’s heart almost bursts with pride and fear.

Four years later, Jackie Rollins becomes the first female agent to qualify for STRIKE Alpha.

An old, grizzled Brock gives her a challenge coin with an eagle on it, the first smile anyone’s seen from him in twenty years, and her uncle’s callsign Lucky.

  
  


Galaxies away, Jack Rollins opens his eyes to the dull gray, mildew-slick wall of what can only be a holding cell.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack blinks once, twice, studying the wall in front of him. Or, ceiling, rather. Something. It’s sloped. He’s lying on his back, on a firm surface. A dull thrum resonates through the structure beneath and around him, so he’s in some form of vehicle.

A deep breath tells him he’s sucking in recirculated air. Something is stale, with an almost metallic tang to it, and there’s a faint oily aftertaste telling him lubricant oil is atomizing and mixing into their breathable air somewhere.

He doesn’t have a whole lot to go off of, but there’s a suspicion he’s on a spaceship.

That’s confirmed when he rolls his head to the side, away from the slant of the ceiling, and sees a utilitarian, blocky interior hallway disappearing back, behind a set of wrought-iron bars from ceiling to floor.

A middle-aged man leans casually against the bars, red leather coat tight around his shoulders and arms where he’s crossed them. Curly brown hair with flecks of gray in it frames a youthful but lined face, and a short beard blurs the edge of the man’s jaw ever so slightly. The edge of his coat just barely hides a large, futuristic firearm, along with a set of pouches along a wide, sturdy belt. Boots similar to Jack’s lace up to mid-calf, though the texture of the leather is a little unusual to Jack’s eyes.

“Y’know,” the man says in perfect American English, glancing up at Jack, “it’s been a really long time since I’ve seen another Terran.”

It’s when Jack tries to sit up that he realizes he’s still somehow encased in Blackbird. The suit resists his movements, motors complaining as he forces them to turn, but eventually he’s sitting up on the narrow cot in what he’s decided is the brig of a small freighter.

“I tried to peel you outta the armor, but all I managed to do was retract the helmet.”

A few dull taps on the arc reactor in the chest plate confirms that it didn’t survive its trip to absolute zero and back. Damn shame.

“Rollins.”

Jack’s head snaps up and he narrows his eyes.

The other man shrugs one-shouldered. “That’s your name, right? It’s stencilled on the shoulder. Rollins, J. Lt Com. American flag. I’m guessing that means Lieutenant Commander.”

With a small sigh, Jack nods. He slowly lowers himself back down to the cot and lays down, then forces the manual releases to cooperate enough to crawl out of Blackbird.

“So, Lieutenant Commander J Rollins.” The bars creak quietly as the man shifts his weight, still leaning against them. “You’re a long way from home, pal. What piss-awful luck put you floating out in the black on the ass end of the universe?”

Jack almost doesn’t recognize his voice when he finally gets it to work. “Aliens attacked us.” Without Blackbird insulating him, it’s cold in the brig. His STRIKE uniform is stuck to his skin, and he knows better than to move too much without working the fabric free beforehand. So, he stands there, awkwardly still, eyeing up his companion and captor.

The man raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.

“The brass was gonna nuke Manhattan to get rid of the aliens,” Jack rasps. “So I flew it up through the portal and into the fuckers’ fleet instead.”

Eyebrows lower and draw together. “Nuke? Like… Japan? World War Two?” Jack nods, and the man swears under his breath. Then, he looks at Jack, and his frown takes on a look of intense interest. “What year is it, for you?”

“2012. The fourth of May.”  _ May the Fourth be with you,  _ Mickey had half-jokingly said to Jack just that morning over the phone, possibly more of a prayer for safe return than either of them had realized.

Interest fades to sympathy so strong that it burns to look at. “I’m sorry, man…” Jack’s captor shakes his head. “It’s a miracle you’re even alive. I found you floating in the wreckage of the Chitauri fleet. You’ve been frozen for twenty-four years.”

  
  


It doesn’t take long before Quill releases Jack, gives him access to the ‘shower’ and a change of clothes that’s a bit too small, and a cellophane bag full of something that might have once pretended to be an MRE. Still, it’s calories, so Jack isn’t complaining as he spoons it into his mouth.

  
  


“Listen,” Quill says to him a few hours later, tapping away at the navigation system. “I don’t have enough fuel to get you even close to a jump point, let alone all the way back home. And I don’t have enough credits to buy anything close to what we’d need.”

“So drop me on the nearest civilized planet and I’ll figure something out.”

Quill snorts and the corner of his mouth twitches into something resembling a smile. “Pretty sure you don’t speak the language.”

Well, that’s not something Jack considered.

He scrubs a hand over his face and sets the empty pouch down next to him. “I’m guessing that getting a new power source for my suit ain’t gonna come cheap…”

Tilting his head back and forth, Quill considers. “Probably not, no. But I know a guy.”

  
  


That’s how they end up making landfall on a place Quill says is called Knowhere, but looks vaguely like a giant corpsified head. Jack watches warily as Quill docks their spacecraft, and promises to keep his mouth shut and let the other guy do all the talking. Not too much of an ask, considering Jack’s so far out of his element that he’s not sure the Periodic Table even applies anymore.

  
  


And that’s how Jack ends up handing Blackbird over at gunpoint, credits changing hands from a green-skinned brute to Quill, and two more creatures Jack’s never seen the likes of before rushing at him with a heavy black bag.

“I said I knew a guy who could repair it,” Quill tells him dispassionately, slightly muffled through the heavy canvas hood and the whine in Jack’s ears as electric shocks rip through his body. “I didn’t say we’d repair it for  _ your _ use.”

Jack manages to grit out a few swears before the world goes black.


	3. Chapter 3

Creatures of all shapes, colors, sizes, and states of matter titter in excitement as the Grandmaster rolls his way into the large party chamber. A new contender, especially one  _ sold _ to them, is always an exciting day.

Topaz walks in from the other side of the chamber - let it never be said the Grandmaster can’t plan a good entrance. She has several scrappers behind her, each of them carrying their wares, but it’s the two in the front that the Grandmaster is most interested in.

The two scrappers walk up to the Grandmaster and unceremoniously drop the new contender to the floor; the man lands with a dull thump. He doesn’t move, just… laying there.

The Grandmaster’s face falls a little. Whatever he was expecting, this wasn’t it. He’s clearly been oversold on his newest acquisition.

The man’s fairly well sized, though, and muscled. That much is apparent. He’s breathing, so at least they won’t have a repeat of last week. A too-small long sleeve shirt barely reaches the waistband of trousers that the Grandmaster suspects are too short as well, but the length is hidden by the uppers of sturdy-looking black leather boots.

“...that’s it?” he asks, looking between the scrappers. One of them looks at the other, and shrugs. “You promised me the greatest warrior this galaxy has ever seen, and you deliver me a limp fish.”

One of the scrappers nudges the contender with its foot, as if to prod the man awake. Next to the Grandmaster, one of the courtesans yawns, hiding it delicately behind a manicured hand. Another nudge to the man’s hip, a gentle prod with the end of a staff, and a slight twitch of the man’s fingers is all the warning they get before pure chaos explodes around him.

In the course of a few seconds, the man sends both scrappers flying toward the walls with enough force to crumble the ornate plasterwork. He has a scrapper’s staff in one hand and a blaster in the other; spinning, he fires off a series of rapid shots that take down the higher ranking guards. Two more guards fall as the man swings around them and uses their bodies to propel him toward a third.

The chaos ends with the man holding one of the young Krylorians at gunpoint, blaster muzzle pressed into the soft pink skin under her jaw.

Hard gray-green eyes drill into the Grandmaster’s own. The only sound for several long heartbeats is the nervous murmuring of the socialites pressed up against the far wall.

“Topaz,” the Grandmaster says casually, flicking his wrist, “I think Scrappers 184 and 185 have earned their fee.”

Humming flatly, Topaz turns to look at the unmoving piles of hairy creatures. “Scrappers 184 and 185 appear to be deceased.”

That doesn’t get much of a reaction from the contender.

“Such a shame, that.” The Grandmaster moves to stand up from his throne, but halts in his tracks when the contender pulls the Krylorian’s head back by the hair and presses the blaster in more firmly. He hasn’t said a word yet, but the message is clear:  _ stay put. _ “Okay, okay, okay. Have it your way.”

The contender snorts quietly and his lip curls. “I’ll kill her if you don’t take me home.” His voice is quiet but clear, with an accent that immediately identifies him as Terran.

Propping his chin on his hand, the Grandmaster bats his eyelashes a few times. “If you beat my Champion, your freedom you shall win. Freedom to, say, return home. Where  _ is _ home, by the way?”

“C-53,” the man says flatly, and what little sound was left in the party chamber dies instantly.

Little is known about C-53, but what is known is a clear warning sign: Stay away. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. It’s a planet of death, poison, disease, war, and explosive dissuasion of any newcomers.

The Grandmaster raises his eyebrows, carefully ignoring Topaz as she readies a stun gun. Perhaps this man is more than just a fresh gladiator to stir up the crowds. Perhaps he really  _ could _ contend for the title of Champion.

“You’re in luck, then,” he eventually says, giving the man a winning smile. “We have some vacancies for talented fighters like you.”

The contender doesn’t get a chance to answer, though, before Topaz hits him with a stun wave that deposits him quickly on the floor. The blaster clatters to the floor and slides a bit, and the Krylorian staggers away into the arms of her friends.

“Take him away,” the Grandmaster orders, “and get him ready.”


	4. Chapter 4

Jack’s getting really tired of waking up and having no fucking clue where he is.

There’s a dull roar of activity around him, footsteps weaving about where he’s lying on the floor. Moving slowly to avoid startling anyone, Jack pushes himself up so he’s sitting on the floor, and looks around at a scene that belongs in a damn  _ Star Wars  _ movie.

Aliens of all shapes, sizes, species, and configurations mill about. One giant creature looks to be made entirely out of granite. Another looks like Edward Scissorhands’ bipedal cyberpunk dog. There’s one humanoid with three heads, all decorated in thick blue lines of war paint.

All of them are holding weapons.

“Oh, look,” Rockslide says, and swings an unnecessarily large spear to point at Jack. “New guy’s awake.”

Jack squints up at the thing - is it from New Zealand?! He groans and rubs his forehead, trying to ease away the last echoes of whatever the alien taser did to him.

Crouching in front of Jack, Rockslide is still the height of a smallish adult human. He pokes Jack firmly in the chest and hums. “Did you come back from the dead? You don’t look dead. What species are you?”

Jack’s still getting over the fact that an animate creature made from  _ rock _ just  _ poked him in the chest what the fuck. _

“Take it easy on ‘im, Korg,” a silky female voice interrupts, and Jack turns to see an electrified fence of some sort separating them off from… a bar? A solidly built woman with black hair leans against one of the fence pillars on the other side of the static bars and gestures to Jack with an oversized brown glass bottle. “You okay there, handsome?”

Scoffing a bit, Jack carefully eases himself to his feet. “Don’t flirt if you don’t intend to follow through, honey, I can tell I’m not your type.” He ignores the aliens staring at him - but isn’t that an interesting contrast - and walks over toward the woman.

She laughs and takes a swig from the bottle. “And what, exactly,  _ isn’t _ my type?”

“Sober.” Somehow, Jack doubts his AA chip is going to mean anything out here. He raises an eyebrow and looks at the bottle; it’s labeled in a script Jack can’t- wait, okay, that’s… he can read it now. What. He blinks away the odd sensation of things shifting before his eyes. “And lacking a second X chromosome.”

The woman gives him a surprisingly shrewd glance, for how much she reeks of liquor, and swings the bottle before slowly sauntering back to the bar. “Suit yourself, Whirlwind.”

“Whirlwhat.”

“That’s what they told us to call you,” Korg answers helpfully. “That’s your new gladiator name. We all have one.”

Jack closes his eyes and tilts his head up to the ceiling, swearing under his breath. “How long have I been here?”

“Couple of hours, maybe three. You weren’t moving. We placed bets on whether you were dead.”

“Charming,” Jack mutters, and heads for a blank space in the wall to lean against. Three hours- wait, eight including transit from Knowhere. Eight hours without any food or water. He’s trained for this, and he’s survived worse, but he has the feeling they’re going to thrust him into the arena beyond the far wall very soon.

“Relax, new guy, they won’t throw you in with the Champion until you’ve survived a few other fights.”

Tilting his head back against the wall and closing his eyes, Jack exhales quietly. “That’s less reassuring than you think it is.”

“Well, you’ll have to go through Processing first, so…”

Jack opens his eyes and looks up at Korg. “Processing?”

“Yeah.” Granite fingers pluck at Quill’s shirt. “Can’t have you going out there looking like you play sim-games in your mum’s basement, can we?”

Two of the coliseum guards choose that moment to approach, and one of them wags a little silver device at Jack. “Time to go, Terran.”

_ Terran  _ causes a bit of a hush among the other gladiators, and the ones that were minding their own business turn to look.

“Yeah, that’s right,” the guard says with a smirk. “Got ourselves a  _ human _ here. Good, old fashioned, organic, fair trade  _ human.” _

Jack puts on his best predator’s smile and steps forward; he’s a good few inches taller than the guard. “That’s right,” he confirms quietly, knowing his voice will still carry in the dead silence of the holding area. “I’m Terran.” Taking another half step forward, he leans closer. “And I flew a nuclear warhead into space to kill the fuckers that tried-”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish before blinding sparks explode across his neck and his body slumps to the floor, beyond his control.

Korg winces above him. “Ooh, Obedience Disc. Those are nasty.”

Jack can’t move of his own volition as he’s dragged off to a side door (again) and hauled up to his feet. He’s shoved into a restraint chair and pinned down, and a quiet whir draws his attention to the right.

An old, bespectacled man that looks disturbingly like the night shift security guard at SHIELD’s Tactical Training Facility parking garage holds up some sort of… device? Prosthetic? Regardless, it has spinning, gleaming blades that Jack  _ does not like. _

“Come near me with that thing,” he snarls, and he can’t help the show of teeth, “and I will use it to separate you from your genitals.”

He ends up keeping whatever it is they were planning to cut off.

  
  


The armorers are almost desperate to get him to take a weapon into the arena, and one of them actually starts crying when Jack quietly refuses. He’s left to his own devices to pick through piles of… well, trash… to piece together something resembling armor.

Quill’s pants can stay, but Jack decides he’s better off without the constricting fabric of the shirt and strips it off in favor of a chest plate and shoulder piece that should protect him reasonably well. For all that their materials were the universe’s refuse and forgotten things, the armorers have done an impressive job coming up with functional protective equipment.

Some time later - Jack’s having trouble calibrating his internal clock - he’s standing in front of a huge blast door, decked out in a getup that makes him feel like Starcraft and Warcraft had a bastard child and then it smoked some crack.

The weird man from before with the blue lip makeup is nattering on, or at least a giant holographic projection of him is, and Jack tunes it out a little as he tries to guess what his opponents might be. Idly poking at the silver disc stuck to his neck only gets him a cranky zap for his efforts.

“And now, our newest addition…” Jack draws in a breath and holds it for a moment. “From all the way across the universe… From a backwater planet just starting to spread its intergalactic wings…”

Jack closes his eyes and exhales.

“I give you…  _ Whirlwind!” _

He can’t completely stifle the small eye roll, but hey, he’s had stupider nicknames.

The blast door rises with a resounding groan, and Jack steps forward into the vast expanse of the arena.

“Let the games begin!”


	5. Chapter 5

Jack feels  _ tiny _ in the arena when he steps in. He looks over his shoulder briefly when the blast door shuts behind him, cutting him off from any sort of strategic retreat.

The walls are easily three times his height, and they show clear evidence that they’re more durable than the average concrete. They’d have to be, given the size of the five other gladiators he’s been pitted against. He’s less than half the size of the next smallest competitor. And now he’s sort of regretting not choosing a weapon…

The three on the other side of the arena just sort of charge at each other, and Jack feels relatively confident that they’ll be occupied for the time being. That’ll give him more time to deal with the two brutes bearing down on him from either side. He looks to his left, then his right, sizing up each of them - that sword looks deceptively simple, and Jack just  _ knows  _ something’s up with it. Best to avoid it entirely.

He plants a boot in the rough-grit sand, then charges headlong at the smaller of the two gladiators. At the last moment, he dives forward feet-first, sliding neatly between two massive legs. He twists, rolls, and comes up running, continuing straight for the wall some fifty yards away.

A sickening crunch and a thud tell Jack that his strategy worked, and he’s down one opponent. The crowd  _ cheers. _

It takes him a moment to realize they’re cheering his new name.

He’s never been one for the spotlight, even when he was prancing about onstage in school musicals. The only reason he’d enjoyed the lead roles was because of the skill involved in the performance, not the recognition of rank. And he’d been happy to continue that through his combat career, thriving as a knife in the dark, the trustworthy lieutenant in the shadow of his Commander.

“Fanatics,” Jack mutters as he does his best to outrun the beast on his heels.

He reaches the wall, runs up it, and launches himself into the air, twisting as he flies. Instinct and training served him right, and he touches down behind the beast. He hasn’t even fully rolled out of the fall and stood up when the immovable wall absolutely creams the not-so-unstoppable force.

He can tell the crowd isn’t sure what to make of the two quick, indirect kills. Some are cheering, some are just… watching.

Jogging at a relatively leisurely pace over to the first carcass, Jack scoops up the deceptively plain sword. He also takes the creature’s shield and slides it onto his arm. There’s a brief flash of red, blue, and vibranium-silver in its place, and Jack blinks away the memory of training with Rogers just days before disaster struck.

Taking another deep breath, Jack turns to see what he has left to deal with. Another gladiator lies motionless off to the side, a dark pool of ichor spreading slowly out from the unmoving body. The remaining two aliens fight furiously, and Jack’s starting to think he might be a little outclassed for the first time in a good long while.

He gives the sword a few experimental flourishes, and nearly drops it in surprise when it shudders in his hand and  _ doubles _ in length. Well, that’s… less useful than intended. He glowers at it, repeats the little twist of his wrist that made it expand, and it contracts back down. There’s an inverse proportion between showmanship and pragmatism, and Jack’s never been much for the former.

A solid kick to the thorax sends Gladiator 5 careening into the wall, where its many limbs settle limply to the ground and it doesn’t get back up. The sixth and last competitor slowly turns to Jack, and he can hear the dull thump of its sub-audible vocalizations even from several hundred yards away.

He has another world-tilting moment of feeling very small in the cosmically proportioned arena, then settles into a defensive stance. Narrowing his eyes, he bares his teeth, and-

The next thing he knows, he’s lying flat on his back, searing pain rocketing up and down his spine from the Obedience Disc. A giant steel-banded club rises up in the air over him, and it’s all he can do to bring the shield up in time to deflect the blow.

Rolling out of the way, Jack staggers to his feet, but the Obedience Disc is still complaining violently.

“Not fucking fair,” Jack growls with a dark look up at the Grandmaster’s box. He’s fairly sure no one up there is even  _ watching,  _ given how the writhing mass of bodies resembles an orgy.

Turning back around to face his opponent, Jack takes a steadying breath, pushes away the pain, and prepares to kill the beast with his own two hands if he has to.

Fortunately, the ugly brute isn’t the smartest tack in the box, and Jack’s able to tire it out some by playing a very serious game of cat and mouse. At this point, it’s just a matter of which of them tires and slips up first.

And slip up he does. He plants his boot to turn and the sand just slides out from under him like water; the alien’s club grazes his torso as he staggers.

Jack loses consciousness for several seconds after his opponent catapults him into the wall with a well-placed blow. He comes to with his lead lolling over to one side, ears ringing so sharply he can’t even hear the brute’s victory roar. A scalp wound he hadn’t noticed before is sending a steady trickle of blood into his right eye, which might present more of a problem if Jack could get his eyes to  _ work. _

Okay. Okay, stop. Think.

Jack’s lungs spasm as he inhales. Cracked ribs. Two. He takes a deeper breath and can’t stifle the whine that slips out of him. Three cracked ribs. The abrasions on his leg and arm from sliding under the first gladiator are starting to smart, and there’s definitely sand and grit stuck to and in his skin. His ankle will probably be complaining loudly in the morning, if he lives to see whatever this hellhole has for a morning.

And the fucking monster won’t stop waving its club about and hollering at the crowd.

The noise works its way in past the tinnitus and only adds to the headache, wooziness, and stomach-flipping vertigo that Jack’s fighting down. Massive pounding feet translate into thumps that jar the arena floor around Jack enough to shift the fragmented bones on his right side. He grits his teeth and hisses through a few shallow breaths, then slowly, cautiously levers himself to his feet.

His shield is nowhere to be seen, and the sword is far enough away that it looks like a toothpick. Baring bloodied teeth, Jack snarls quietly as he spots a large, wicked-looking knife in the belt of his opponent.

For all that the last gladiator looks like a bear bumped uglies with a wild boar, anatomy is anatomy. It sidesteps and turns a few degrees to roar at a new section of the spectators, and that’s all the confirmation Jack needs before he lunges in, grabs the knife, and hamstrings the beast.

It crumples to the sand, shrieking in a way that Jack’s thankful he can’t entirely hear at this point. He’s pretty sure the warm wetness in his right ear is a burst eardrum.

Swinging around in a way Jack  _ knows _ he’s going to regret for days, he gets his knees around the creature’s neck and unceremoniously stabs it in as many places as possible in the hopes of finding a-

Yep. Arterial spray gives Jack a warm, enthusiastic greeting as it soaks him from the waist up.

He half-falls, half-staggers off the creature, carrying his aching body just far enough to be safe from the death throes of a thing five times his size. Sinking to one knee, Jack breathes harshly, his left hand still clenched white-knuckled around the handle of the knife.

Raising his eyes, he looks up at the platform the Grandmaster is standing on. The tall, thin, berobed man is the only still point in a writhing throng of bodies behind him. Jack doesn’t even hear the fanatical cheering of the spectators around them as they stare at each other.

After a few long heartbeats that he can feel in every joint in his body, Jack lurches to his feet and starts the long walk back to the door he came in through.

_ Let the games begin, indeed. _


End file.
